Trashies , The "The Octagon" LP
Side A: The Octagon, Contact Low, Roachryder, Heavy Door, Talk To My Lawyer, Fresh Honey
Side B: Dumb 2 B Smart, VENOM, Rhinoline My Mind, I'm Uhhhh Stayn, Shovel
"The Octagon is uncanny and cracked, scrappy and manic — the work of a band at wits’ end. It’s the 5th album by The Trashies, and a model for bucking late-career complacency: The Octagon sounds like nothing in the dada-bards of garbage rock’s madcap discography. The production skews homespun-to-crude; the songs, whether woozy or chittering, feel frenzied. Still, it’s occasionally gorgeous, and boasts flights of lyrical invention. Passages of illegible noise — probably power-tools, maybe a twisted tailpipe — cede to infernal couplets (“Heavy Door”) and sauntering prettiness (“Fresh Honey”). The Trashies, split between Oakland and Seattle, recorded The Octagon across a span of three years in various living-rooms and rehearsal dens throughout the Pacific Northwest. It’s co-released by Oakland’s Fine Concepts and the band’s own 24/7 Records, and features artwork by Max Nordile and Erin Allen, hand screened at Fine Concepts Laboratories."- Sam Lefebvre
"The most important gunk-rock band to come out of the Northwest in our lifetime, the Trashies—Ron Wolfman (guitar/vocals), Jesse Cody (keyboards on trashcans/vocals), Ricky Ticky Tahvi Router Table (drums), Billy Goat Brown Note (bass)—have renewed their vows of idiocy for their fifth full-length album…
Step into The Octagon.
Exploring new art-gunk crevices, The Octagon stretches out classic Trashies sounds and concepts into cough-syrupy new shapes. Wandering further away from their 2004-era speedy satire punk with each release, the Trashies of The Octagon haven’t forgotten their roots as much as they’ve let them ferment into a mind-altering stew. The straightforward parody has warped into allusions of deeper freak-dom. Less Spits/Reatard, more Fall/Beefheart.
The trash has aged into a fine compost.
Recorded by resident producer Wolfman, The Octagon pushes the Trashies into more experimental zones—uncomplicated electronic drums, bizarre sound samples, and vertigo-inducing vocal layers are smeared over their more familiar spiraling bass, guitar, and keyboard riffs.
Album opener “Dumb 2 B Smart” honors the Trashies tradition of rejecting all things intelligent; the music is being on DMT at Home Depot. A choir of gurgling mutants falsetto through “Fresh Honey”—an ode to outdoor toilets—backed by the most actually-very-beautiful music on the album (synth lines and guitar noodles as tranquil as the untouched blue liquid in a fresh Honey Bucket).
The demented hootenanny that is “Shovel”—the ballad of a man with nothing but a shovel in a single-occupancy tool shed—reminds us that no Trashies album is complete without the fecund brain of Jesse Cody; a worm of many words, his savant monologues/ramblings/squealings are particularly genius on this album. “I received a shovel when I burst from the womb/Now I just have a shovel and an empty room.”
Like a tropical fungus eating through a construction site, “Heavy Door” and “Rhinoline My Mind” both feature the combination of steel drums and power tools (someone had to do it). The album’s title/final track is a mutant ringmaster bleating word salad over a dilapidated carny groove. There are other songs, too, but you get the idea.
This is music to lick toads to. Bless this mess."
-Emily Nokes
The Octagon is The Trashies 5th full length album.
